


Till Death Us Do Part

by Palebluedot



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, London, M/M, Marriage, Nassau, canon compliant greatly exaggerated reports of character death, post-reunion, there is some explicit sex but if ur looking for porn this will waste your time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-15 01:14:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11795370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palebluedot/pseuds/Palebluedot
Summary: And there's that ache, and there's that sweetness, and lord, James really would swear in the eyes of God that he cannot bear to live without him, wouldn't he?~+~+~+~Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder: a triptych.





	Till Death Us Do Part

“ _Whatever_ has amused you so, Lieutenant?” Thomas asks, finally prying his lips from the soft, flushed skin above James's collarbones, eyes bright in the dim room.

Once the light of it shines at last through the fog hanging heavy as incense over James's mind, it strikes him as a very sound question. This time he _knows_ why he's laughing — he simply can't think of the answer. After a moment, Thomas appears to give up on the matter and resumes dropping his smiling kisses across James's neck with a hazy fervor. The hand he slid between James's thighs some time ago gives him another long, slow stroke, and even as James stretches out, reclines deeper into the soft and loose-furled sheets, the memory resurfaces, his eyes reopen.

“I was thinking,” he says, voice still unsteady with mirth, “that when my first commanding officer railed against the evils of sodomy below decks, he neglected to mention how _good_ it feels.”

The grin Thomas shows him is pridefully wicked. “A cruel oversight indeed. Perhaps he should have lectured on its proper practice instead,” he remarks airily, and the tart, dry honey of the wine on his breath is what James imagines the warm nectar running through his own veins might smell like. He twists his wrist, smirks when James's breath hitches, and when he pauses for a thoughtful moment, James suspects it's the same sort of show. “Then again, who's to say we're engaged in sodomy at all?”

James lifts his head from the pillow, eyebrow raised, and stares down at Thomas's oil-slick fingers sliding lazily along the length of his cock. “Darling, I'm afraid I must inform you— ” Thomas unhands him, his turn now to laugh, and he straddles James's thighs, bends to kiss him with that ravenous, smiling mouth. James rises to meet him, all talk of semantics forgotten, but when he breaks from Thomas's red-bitten lips to mouth along his throat, he's reminded that God himself couldn't derail the voice behind it from following a line of reasoning to its end.

“What I _mean_ ,” Thomas clarifies, the hand not braced against the mattress tangling happily in James's hair, “is that the category is remarkably slippery. Plenty of people are concerned with its prevention, whatever the cost, but ask one of them if the mouth is capable of sodomy, or the hand, or the space between the thighs, or if the act is synonymous only with _buggery_ , and they'll likely tell you a rather different story than the one you'd hear from another of their number — ” James interrupts with a nip of teeth, clipping off the end of Thomas's sentence. Under his lips, he feels Thomas's throat work as he smothers a moan. He smirks, pleased with himself, and kisses that throat with a wolfish ardor, hoping for a repeat performance, but when again Thomas opens his mouth, the words fall fully-formed. “And, of course, history reveals the legal definition to be as changeable as the everyday. So, if no consensus can be reached, I ask again, who has the authority to rule on what is and is not sodomy, or to decide that how you and I spend our nights is at all inferior to the joining of husbands and wives?”

A glowing fondness outshining his faint frustration at the fact that Thomas was able to keep his voice _steady_ throughout all of that, James leaves his quest to mark up Thomas's neck half-finished, lies back and admires how the low candlelight accentuates the gleam in Thomas's eye, the one that shines every time he draws a winning argument from the air like a dagger from his boot. “Well, whatever you care to name it,” he says, reaching up and twining his arms around Thomas's back, “what we share in this bed certainly happens out of wedlock.”

“Ah, but I'll accept no blame for that,” Thomas parries, voice tinged with a strange sadness, even as he smiles down at James, kisses him between each breath. “If the clergy and lawmakers proved less effective obstacles, I'd have courted and married you three times over by now.”

Thomas is not a man prone to hyperbole, so James waits for the huff of laughter against his lips. If it comes, it's lost in the warm weight gently pinning him down, the kisses that fall over his face like summer rain. Thomas noses at his cheek, and for a moment, James imagines he _means_ it — but only for a moment. The man he loves is no fool, after all. “And what would dear Miranda have to say about that?” he asks, and somehow still sounds like himself.

“Oh, something wise, no doubt,” Thomas replies absently, attention seemingly focused on trailing the backs of his fingers down the side of James's jaw. He traces the edge of James's bottom lip with his thumb and the corner of his own mouth twitches, as though remembering a joke. “Perhaps one day she'll tell us herself.”

James swallows. It can be a cruel fate, he knows well by now, to love a dreamer. Today, he longs for impossibilities he could never have envisioned mere months ago, and the phantom ache of them presses against the insides of his ribs like a tongue against a sore tooth. But love his dreamer he does, down to the very blood and soul of him, and those strange, gossamer tapestries he weaves enchant both the days and nights with such loveliness, he cannot bear to part with a single thread. “You sound ridiculous,” James tells him, smile soft and voice warm, and he knows Thomas hears every note of the particular way in which he means what he says, yet doesn't mean it at all.

“Well, that's allowed,” Thomas sighs, a velvet-edged defiance. He takes his time shifting his weight, the careful downward press of his hips making James arch into him as his kisses flow from his neck to his chest. “I _am_ in love, after all,” he murmurs adoringly into the skin of James's drawn-tight stomach. “Those in love must be granted the right to a touch of madness, wouldn't you agree?”

And there's that ache, and there's that sweetness, and lord, James really would swear in the eyes of God that he cannot bear to live without him, wouldn't he? His hands slide up Thomas's back, curling in the hair at his nape when Thomas nuzzles below his hip. “It's in my best interests to,” he says, grinning up at the ceiling, “as I'm quite madly in love myself.”

Thomas smiles at that, James can tell from that contented hum when he takes him in his mouth, the same way he feels it in his blood when Thomas hollows his cheeks and sucks. His hips jerk, Thomas opens for him, licks at him with the flat of his tongue, and James's sharp gasp escapes as breathless, giddy laughter. He turns his head to the side, and never spares a thought for how the sheets that muffle his panting breath and cling warm to his back do not adorn his marriage bed.

~+~+~+~+~+~

The dark stain on the wall swallows light, the cruel-tipped glass strewn beneath it does not, instead wearing the candle flame like a second gleaming skin. James stares into that pointed fire, and his fist clenches around the tattered paper, the one that's begun to tear along the creases that line it as age does the faces of those who do not die young, the one that is not his letter to burn. Over the flame, Miranda's eyes meet his, and they are not so bloodshot as they were before, but they are dull, and they are distant, shadowed and lost.

Her hand, skeletal, grips the neck of a bottle and tips it back — _she_ threw the glass, dashed it against the wall, just there, James remembers, faintly surprised it had not been him. She threw it, and wailed into her hands, and James draped his coat across her shoulders and said nothing, stood behind her with his hand on her bent back, then she straightened and he sank back into the chair across the table, and there they stayed as the light faded around them.

“My husband is dead,” she says to the door at James's back, voice as flat as her gaze. “I am _widowed_.” That last word she pushes out slowly, lips learning the shape, or perhaps resisting it. The sound hangs heavy in the air, thickening and draining it like smoke. If hearing it pains her, she does not show it, but when her eye drifts again to his face, she studies him for long moments, then turns away, her brow quirked as if to say, _there you have it_. “I suppose you are, too.”

And it should be true. It _should_ be. James does not want to resent the remark, because Miranda is the only person in the world who knows the measure of the hole torn through his heart, and she meant it as a kindness besides, but to claim the truth of a thing that should be but instead is not can only strike him as cloyingly false. _Miranda_ is a widow. The ring on her finger may have grown heavy, but she _has_ one, the same way she has a name for her grief, an identity that feeds on it. James is no one — just a man who must bury in silence his desire to cross the cold Atlantic and waste away curled atop an already-forgotten grave. Bethlem's cruelty outlasts this life; he would find it unmarked and unkept, but he would know it, he's certain of it. The same intuition that led James to Thomas's door when he longed wearily for home would guide his steps one final time, for he loves the very earth his bones will become. _Bone of my bones,_ he thinks. _How hollow_ _you've left me._

“No.” His voice rasps, hating the passage from his throat. “As far as they're concerned, he never — _we_ never....” The tears that sting and choke him are bitter, and he forces them down. Shakily, he draws a breath. “They denied what we were to one another, mutilated the narrative. Even as they stared love in the face and found it abhorrent enough to warrant murder, they feigned blindness, confined it to the shadows and robbed us of any recognition. I will not pretend they did not succeed.”

Miranda's eyes fall closed now, and James cannot tell if it is rage, anguish, or that numb, gray emptiness she hides. She pushes the bottle towards him. It drags along the table, nails scraping against a coffin lid, and her arm falls limp when he takes it from her. After the rum sears him, he lays his hand across hers with all the gentleness that his other hand, ink-smudged and white-knuckled, has lost. It is still not his letter to burn, but if he could wrench open his fist long enough to dip a corner in the fire, he might steal that right. He can't. So he stares into the flickering light before him, and he does not burn the letter, and he imagines the scorch of molten wax on his fingers, a tipped candlestick clattering to the floor and rolling, that one drop of flame swelling into an ocean of hellfire vast enough to drown in.

~+~+~+~+~+~

From the sun blazing hot on his back and the tight circles he rubs with a scrap of leather into the dark wood before him, a good, clean sweat breaks across James's brow. He's almost burnished this post to a smooth shine, and his arm feels every bit of his progress, so he sits back and mops at his forehead with his sleeve. Soon, there'll be nothing left to do but declare it done — but not yet. Just as he decides to return to work, two arms slide down over his chest from behind, holding him near. Thomas smells like rich earth from the garden and the heat of the day, and when James starts to look 'round to smile at him, he's intercepted by the warm press of lips on his cheek.

“My love returns from the sea long years after he was presumed lost, and _then_ builds a bed for us both with his own strong hands...” Thomas trails off in his ear, taking one of those hands in his own. “Dearest, I think you ought to brush up on your Homer. This emulation of Odysseus is rather out of order.”

James laughs low in his throat. “You'll recall Penelope waited _twenty_ years, so unless I've offended you somehow, I wouldn't insist on perfect accuracy.”

“Mm, I can hardly argue with that,” Thomas hums. “The sea had more than its share of time with you, I'll thank it to let us be.” He starts to step away, then thinks better of it, stopping to smooth James's hair and plant a lingering kiss on top of his head.

James watches fondly as Thomas crosses in front of him and trails his curious fingertips along the edge of the bed frame. Nearly a year since they left the cane fields behind, and the sight of him still often gives James pause. Long months of rented rooms and odd jobs and careful searching before they found this place, then the near-Herculean labor it took to make it fit to live in, and now the gradual replacement of bare necessities with things that make it a home, _their_ home — they've built a life together. Even in London, with eyes around every corner, that seemed at best a dream.

Apparently unaware of James's sudden swell of adoration, Thomas smiles as though he's read something wonderful in the wood grain. “And let's not forget, if you're living the tale backwards, that must mean we're soon to be married,” he says lightly, facing him. “There are harder fates.”

He reaches out and tucks James's hair back behind his ear, letting his fingers brush his cheek after, and oh, James has been in love with the touch of that hand since first he knew it. Most any other day, he'd close his eyes and lean into it, turn to kiss his palm, but now, he can't bear to look away from this brilliant, beautiful man, the loving wit woven into the smile that spreads to the lines fanning from the corners of his eyes, the sunlight catching gold and silver in his hair. He'd do it again, he thinks, not for the first time. Shipwrecks and sirens, gunfire and divine wrath, whatever horrors he must bear or become, with bloody body and drowning lungs, to protect this peace of theirs, he'd choose them all again. Thomas lets his hand start to fall back to his side, the moment starts to pass, and it's as easy as gently catching Thomas by the wrist for James to say, “Haven't we done that already?”

Thomas considers, then shakes his head, and James loves the small furrow to his brow. “No, I'm quite sure Odysseus built the bed in question _after_ they were wed, not before — ”

“I don't mean Odysseus and Penelope.” James's voice is soft and level and clear. He's _certain_ of this, the way he's certain of Thomas's pulse beneath his fingertips. “You and I...we've weathered far more than any two hearts could ever be asked to endure. _Till death us do part_ , the vows say, and we've lasted still longer than that.” Thomas's eyes are wide and blue and staring, and it's not often James sees him speechless, so he reaches for his other hand and holds it there in silence for a breath or two. “And here we are, making our home together, sharing one bed. We bound our lives together long ago, it seems to me. What other name could we give that but a marriage?”

Thomas drops his gaze to their joined hands, and the pressure of his thumbs stroking across James's fingers deepens and soothes. When he looks back up, his eyes are shining. “Have I ever told you,” he asks, faint and smiling, “how very glad I am that the thrice-damned admiralty decided to send me you?”

He has. When the hands James now squeezes were not half so rough or scarred, before the uniform James then wore became a symbol of betrayal and loss, Thomas often told him just that — how lucky they must be. Well, the luck ran out, but love was patient, and did not. “Once or twice,” James nods with a quirk of his lips as he rises to his feet. “Although I'm sure the men who assigned me to you never intended the arrangement to be so permanent.”

“Be that as it may, they made sure you were stuck with me before we ever met,” Thomas informs him, draping his arms over James's shoulders. “There's documentation to prove it.” James's hands find Thomas's waist when he kisses him, and he sighs at the light caress of Thomas's fingers in his hair. The grass beneath his feet is soft, the careful, reverent touch of Thomas's lips is softer, and when it ends, Thomas doesn't go far. “My husband, James,” Thomas says slowly, all the quiet strength of a river that does not rush behind each word. His breath tickles James's cheek. “I do adore the sound of that.”

“When you say it, so do I,” James murmurs, and from the twinkle in Thomas's eye, he knows he'll hear it again and again. But now is the time for a quiet, lingering embrace and the smallest of partings. Thomas kisses James's forehead and takes his hand, not letting go until the steps he takes back towards the garden grow too many to hold on any longer. James looks on for a moment as two hands he loves dearly return to the business of coaxing life from the soil, then he sits before what will soon be their bed and polishes it until it shines.

**Author's Note:**

> I took a class last semester that dealt with how notions of sexuality change drastically in different places and times, and one very amusing example the professor gave was the 1939 case [Thompson v. Aldredge.](https://www.ravellaw.com/opinions/47490798ea73e6ad25553b28119e6eb9) It ruled, due to the specific text of the sodomy laws in the Georgia at the time, that a woman going down on another woman was not, legally speaking, sodomy, but a man going down on a woman _was._ That definition stood for decades, and I've been laughing about it ever since I learned about it. So, that was the inspiration for Thomas's little speech on the matter :) 
> 
> Title and second line of the summary come from the marriage ceremony detailed in The Book of Common Prayer, 1662.
> 
> Crossposted to [tumblr.](https://brightbluedot.tumblr.com/post/164151606189/till-death-us-do-part) Come yell with me about the ways in which these two were coded as a married couple!
> 
> Comments are love!


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